When are we going to be honest with ourselves about how bad Kyle Dubas is?

[SEALBound]

1 and 3 are because the owners literally love Sullivan and gave him the hammer before they even hired Dubas as Director of Hockey Ops. #2 might also be a Sullivan mandate.

Blame him for Acciari.
Blame him for Nedeljkovic.
Blame him for Bunting.
...

Of all the people on the roster, those three are not near the top for me. I don't have issue with Bunting because, on paper, he was a very appropriate roster player to take back for Guentzel. Neds is what makes Jarry expendable and he's signed for a very respectable hit and length. Acciari, 3 years is outrageous. That's a 1yr deal at best. MAYBE 2 years. No GM in the league should be giving three year deals to guys like Acciari.

Jarry, Graves, and Sullivan. Those are the top 3 issues. This organization needs to take a page out of the VGK book and be willing to cut players even if they like them.

 

[3074326]

Calling the current Pens a dream situation is hilariously stupid. Has HFBoards not been obsessed with pointing this out for years already?

Some of you are obsessed with Dubas. Get help. This discussion had been has a million times. I’m not sure I’ve seen Leafs fans talk about anything else since he left.

Still think it’s funny that OP thought the current Pens were a dream situation that a child could win with, lol.

 

[Ragamuffin Gunner]

It's pretty cool how the Pens missing the POs last year was the highlight of most Leafs fans' season.

 

[Tie Domi Esquire]

Calling the current Pens a dream situation is hilariously stupid. Has HFBoards not been obsessed with pointing this out for years already?

Some of you are obsessed with Dubas. Get help. This discussion had been has a million times. I’m not sure I’ve seen Leafs fans talk about anything else since he left.

Still think it’s funny that OP thought the current Pens were a dream situation that a child could win with, lol.

He was talking about the Leafs. How did you fail to understand the post after the initial sentence? And then you call other people stupid.

 

[MCR74]

It's pretty cool how the Pens missing the POs last year was the highlight of most Leafs fans' season.

With Kyle in charge, the Pens better get used to missing the playoffs.

 

[Empoleon8771]

A smart front office would try and reunite Burns and Karlsson again on the same team after seeing how poorly it played out in San Jose lol?

Friedman said that Carolina, Pittsburgh and Seattle were the 3 finalists for Karlsson.

 

[Voight]

No that is exactly what should havr gotten based on Eichel comparable

Matthews gets 11-11.5M x 8

Marner gets 8.5M x 8 being a worse player than Eichel in 2017, 2018 and 2019

Nylander gets 7.5M x 8 as his comparables were Gaudreau (RIP), Ehlers, Pastranak

Marner performed better than EIchel on their ELCs. He wasn't going to get less, center or not.

 

[hamzarocks]

Marner performed better than EIchel on their ELCs. He wasn't going to get less, center or not.

No he didnt

2015-2016: advantage Eichel

Eichel 56 pts in 81 games on a shit show team

Marner; Not good enough to make the NHL, sent down to OHL

2016 - 2017: advantage eichel

Eichel 57 pts in 61 games on an offensively inept team, where he is 1st in pts, 1st in ppg, 1st in assists and apg, 2nd in goals and gpg

Marner; 61 pts in 77 games, he is tied for 2nd in pts, 2nd in ppg, 1st in assists and apg, 6th in goals and 5th in gpg

2017- 2018: advantage eichel

Eichel 64 pts in 67 games on an offensively inept team, where he is 1st in pts, 1st in ppg, 1st in assists and apg, tied for 1sts in goals and out right 1sts gpg

Marner; 69 pts in 82 games, he is 1st in pts, 2nd in ppg, tied for 1st in assists and tied for 2nd apg, 5th in goals and 5th in gpg

2018- 2019: Tied

Eichel: 82 pts in 77 games on an offensively inept team, where he is 1st in pts, 1st in ppg, 1st in assists and apg, 2nd for goals and 2nd in gpg

Marner; 94 pts in 82 games, he is 1st in pts, 1st in ppg, 1st in assists and 1st in apg, 3rd in goals and 3rd in gpg

2015-2016 to 2017-2018

Eichel = 177 pts in 209 games, 0.85 ppg good for 69 pts per 82, second on sabres in this period is RoR with 176 pts in 224 games or 64 pts per 82 pace

Marner= 130 in 159 games, good for 0.82 ppg or 67 pts per 82. Matthews in this time has 132 pts in 144 games or 75 pts per 82 pace

2016-2017 to 2018-2019

Eichel = 203 pts in 205 games, 0.99 ppg good for 81 pts per 82, second on sabres in this period is Sam Reinhart with 165 pts in 233 games or 58 pts per 82 pace

Marner= 224 in 241 games, good for 0.93 ppg or 76 pts per 82. Matthews in this time has 205 pts in 212 games or 79 pts per 82 pace

Marner was worse from 2016-2019 then eichel on a total basis, team relative basis, and league scoring adjusted basis.

He didnt deserve anywhere near a ~11M x 6 when Eichel, a Center and higher touted player who was performing better then him on a team with significantly less help got 10M x 8.

Matthews at 11M x8 and Marner at 8.5M x 8 would been fair deals

 

[biturbo19]

I don't think many people are really in denial about how bad Dubas is anymore.


He's very much a, "can't see the forest for the trees" sort of GM. He'll technically even "win" some trades now and then. He'll sign "steals" and get great value out of them sometimes.


But he has absolutely no concept of what makes an actually "winning hockey team".




The Penguins situation he walked into sucked, and it was a really tough ask to make that team younger, faster, and tougher. But instead of even trying to do any of that...he just decided instead, to make them older, slower and more expensive. For...reasons.

He got "good prices" on "bargains" on things that he absolutely did not need. But he is, and always has been, always will be...a "bargain hunter" rather than a "team builder" with a coherent vision. He just seems to like getting good "deals" more than he likes building a competent team.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

With Kyle in charge, the Pens better get used to missing the playoffs.

They never missed when he was a Leafs GM. The Penguins were already missing the playoffs with Sullivan regardless. Odd to say when the GM didn't even have that track record to begin with, while Sullivan made dumb decisions vs the Habs in the play in and technically missed that year, then with Hextall as GM, missed again and now with Dubas, missed last year and will miss this year, if you haven't picked up on what we Pens fans have been saying - That's more of a Mike Sullivan issue.

I don't think many people are really in denial about how bad Dubas is anymore.


He's very much a, "can't see the forest for the trees" sort of GM. He'll technically even "win" some trades now and then. He'll sign "steals" and get great value out of them sometimes.


But he has absolutely no concept of what makes an actually "winning hockey team".




The Penguins situation he walked into sucked, and it was a really tough ask to make that team younger, faster, and tougher. But instead of even trying to do any of that...he just decided instead, to make them older, slower and more expensive. For...reasons.

He got "good prices" on "bargains" on things that he absolutely did not need. But he is, and always has been, always will be...a "bargain hunter" rather than a "team builder" with a coherent vision. He just seems to like getting good "deals" more than he likes building a competent team.

Penguins had young players available for Sullivan to play and he almost always chose the veterans to play instead, he gave Harkins 45 games to score a total of 0 goals, it's a tougher situation when your coach is a massive priority to the ownership to the point where ownership put out 2 statements about Sullivan - Something almost entirely unheard of to see 1 statement let alone 2 statements that close together. That apparently isn't enough of an indicator that the Penguins issue isn't as black and white as many of the Dubas haters want it to be.

Dubas is a mediocre Gm, so are most, they'll have a great run and change that course in their GM history, but yeah, JR f***ed a lot of stuff up before he packed his take out menu's and left for Vancouver and then took Allvin with him, when you look at JR's career - He has a crap ton of very bad GM years, but when you're a GM that long, you also build up a ton of good ones. Dubas was never hired to be the GM, likely will still step back into his Director role when a good enough Candidate becomes available again.

But the other shit, lol. The first part "technically even win some trades now and then" you're literally describing every f***ing GM in the league.

He dumped some bad contracts, he added some not so good ones, the Penguins aren't in cap hell so none of these really matter at all. He will have over 10m to use as cap space to take on more bad contracts with picks to keep rebuilding the prospect pool that JR destroyed with trading away 1st rounders and Hextall trading picks as well to fix players Sullivan misused that were "his types."

As for Jarry, who gives a shit, compliance buyout in the Summer takes that off the books, big whoop. At this point, if Jarry rebounds and can be moved, great, if not, I am sure the buyout is the plan. At this point, the hope is the team keeps being crap so they draft higher, Sullivan gets fired, and a new coach can do more with this roster, which is almost a guarantee by just by not being Mike Sullivan.

The Penguins were going to be crap under Sullivan as he was trending to this, he has no sustainable game plan to make things better, he's now stacked Sid & Geno with Rakell as the top line and sucked out the offense out of the rest of the line-up, there's never been the right mix of players to make Sullivan coach better, it just doesn't exist and a coach that is that tight with ownership where they constantly speak out about him being this must have and savior is hilarious.

FSG are idiots, imagine thinking David Quinn being brought in because Sullivan wanted him, is some massive feat to push the team back into being a playoff team - David Quinn is another Masshole, so it's no shock that FSG sees him as a massive coup since Sullivan thinks highly of him as a very close friend, ex Boston University teammate, etc.

Dubas maybe does really suck at being a GM, but I think I'd want to see what his additions to the team could do under a different coach first. His hires as a Director of Hockey Ops has been perfectly fine, had he just stayed in that role we'd hear less shit about him, but I really don't think anyone wanted the GM job in Pittsburgh. It's been talked about enough that FSG loves Sullivan and sees him as some insane legend of a coach. Dubas at this point has to hope Sullivan just keeps doing what he has been doing the last 3 or more seasons, misuse the shit out of this roster no matter who any GM brings in and keeps losing and the fans keep skipping games (Pens had one of their lowest attendances in a game today, less than 15k), but even then, they probably respect Sullivan too much to do it in season or before the 4 Nations Cup.